Jalen Hurts played against the New York Giants twice this season, but he wasn’t the same quarterback in both games.

The first came with the former Alabama QB joining short lists of NFL accomplishments seemingly every week. The second was Hurts’ comeback game after spraining his throwing shoulder.

Which version of the quarterback will be on the field when the Philadelphia Eagles face the Giants in the NFC Divisional Playoffs at 7:15 p.m. CST Saturday?

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“He’s off the injury report, so I’m expecting Jalen Hurts the MVP candidate,” New York defensive coordinator Wink Martindale said. “I think if you expect anything less, you’re kidding yourself because the guy’s definitely a competitor.”

In the Eagles’ 48-22 victory over the Giants on Dec.11, Hurts completed 21-of-31 passes for 217 yards and two touchdowns and ran seven times for 77 yards and one touchdown.

The next week, Hurts sustained his shoulder injury during the third quarter of a 25-20 victory over the Chicago Bears. Although Hurts completed that game, he missed the next two.

Philadelphia lost those games, endangering the Eagles’ hold on the No. 1 seed for the NFC playoffs and the accompanying first-round bye. That brought Hurts back to the field for Philadelphia’s regular-season finale. Hurts completed 20-of-35 passes for 229 yards with no touchdowns and one interception and ran nine times for 13 yards in the Eagles’ 22-16 victory over New York.

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Giants coach Brian Daboll said he didn’t know if Round 3 with the Eagles would bring a return to the designed quarterback runs that helped Hurts accumulate 760 rushing yards and 13 rushing touchdowns in 2022.

“I think you’ve got to prepare for everything,” Daboll said. “Dynamic player. I’ve said this before: He can throw it, he can pass it. That’s why he’s up there for MVP. And we’ve got a big challenge ahead.”

Daboll is well-acquainted with Hurts. The New York coach served as Alabama’s offensive coordinator in 2017, in Hurts’ second season as the Crimson Tide’s quarterback.

“I think you’ve got to go through all the tape from the entire year at this time of year and plan for everything,” Daboll said. “Again, there’s only 65 to 75 plays this time of year, and you’ve got to make sure that you’re trying to give your players everything you can in terms of the preparation process of it. What they do or not do, you never know going into a game, so it’ll be the standard procedure that we usually do.”

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Despite missing two games during the 2022 regular season, Hurts became the first NFL player with at least 22 touchdown passes and 13 rushing touchdowns in the same season. Hurts had the sixth season in which a player has passed for at least 3,500 yards and run for at least 650 yards in a single campaign.

“Everybody’s saying he’s having an MVP season, and I agree because he can beat you with his legs,” Martindale said. “He can beat you with just being a drop-back quarterback. He can beat you with a sore shoulder. He can beat you a lot of different ways, and that’s a great challenge because there’s just a few quarterbacks that can do it that way. And you can have him dead to rights back there in the pocket, and he’s a magician. He’ll get out of it.”

In his second season as the Eagles’ starting quarterback, Hurts boosted his passing-efficiency rating from 87.2 in 2021 to 101.5, and Philadelphia won 14 of his 15 starts in 2022 after winning eight of 15 last season.

“I’m not happy for the guy right now because I’m preparing for him,” Martindale said. “But you can see the work that he put in the past offseason. And where he’s at today is, to me, two completely different quarterbacks. Out of respect of the game, you respect that. You can see the hard work that he put in. It’s going to be a tremendous challenge.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.